# So Christianity \*didn't\* appropriate the pagan holidays? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 3, 2005, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-christianity-didnt-appropriate-the-pagan-holidays/288260 "2005-02-03T21:47:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Nonsuch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nonsuch/32/2922_2.png) [@Nonsuch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nonsuch)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2005, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-christianity-didnt-appropriate-the-pagan-holidays/288260/1 "2005-02-03T21:47:32Z")
There was an article on Salon a couple of days ago about recent scholarship on witch hunts, and how the popular feminist reading of persecutions being motivated by a patriarchal Church authority trying to extinguish “women’s knowledge” is not supported by the evidence. The article included this phrase in passing: > [@](#): > > _Most of us have heard that Christianity incorporated such pagan and folk traditions as the winter solstice festival (Christmas) and the spring festival (Easter) into the Christian calendar._ I’ve heard this enough times from enough sources that I’ve come to accept it as true. But it prompted a detailed letter in reply, a few choice nuggets of which are (trying to stay within fair use limits here): > [@](#): > > \*It is at least as probable that pagans choose to participate along with Christians and appropriate Christian beliefs into their own celebrations, eventually leading to accretions. > > Efforts to fix a date for the birth of Christ began some two centuries after his death, as the Catholic Church established its traditions. It is important to remember that at this time Christians were being persecuted themselves. Early Christians faced severe penalties for their beliefs and practices […] and I personally find it ridiculous to suggest that they had some plot to convert heathens by appropriating the pagan holidays, when they could barely even practice their religion. > > […] > > An alternate theory suggests that the date of Christmas is based on the date of Good Friday, the day Jesus died. Since the exact date of Jesus’ death is not stated in the Gospels, early Christians sought to calculate it, and arrived at either March 25 or April 6. To then calculate the date of Jesus’ birth, they followed the ancient idea that Old Testament prophets died at an “integral age” – either an anniversary of their birth or of their conception. They reasoned that Jesus died on an anniversary of the Incarnation (his conception), so the date of his birth would have been nine months after the date of Good Friday – either Dec. 25 or Jan. 6.\* Huh. I’ve never heard of any of that. I admit my biases make me pretty easily disposed to believe stories about church corruption and mendacity—is it possible I’ve been sold a bill of goods? Can anyone with knowledge of this area chime in? (Those with Salon subscriptions, or who don’t mind watching an ad, can read the entire letter [here](http://www.salon.com/books/letters/2005/02/03/witch_craze/index1.html).) ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2005, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-christianity-didnt-appropriate-the-pagan-holidays/288260/2 "2005-02-03T22:03:30Z")
I’m no theologian, but I’m guessing that the [Catholic Encyclopaedia](http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03724b.htm) may be a more reliable source than Salon. This is what it has to say > [@](#): > > Conclusion. The present writer in inclined to think that, be the origin of the feast in East or West, and though the abundance of analogous midwinter festivals may indefinitely have helped the choice of the December date, the same instinct which set Natalis Invicti at the winter solstice will have sufficed, apart from deliberate adaptation or curious calculation, to set the Christian feast there too. I _think_ that means that the main reasons for Dec 25 are that it coincided with the Roman Solar festival, as well as sundry pagan ones. The calculations seem to be mainly _a postiori_ reasoning. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2005, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-christianity-didnt-appropriate-the-pagan-holidays/288260/3 "2005-02-03T22:24:42Z")
> [@Tapioca Dextrin](#): > > I’m no theologian, but I’m guessing that the [Catholic Encyclopaedia](http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03724b.htm) may be a more reliable source than Salon. Not neccesarily. Remember, the source you’re citing is over 90 years old. It’s possible that we have information now that they didn’t then. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2005, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-christianity-didnt-appropriate-the-pagan-holidays/288260/4 "2005-02-03T22:33:43Z")
Oh, Jesus! I have in hand a petition from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to the SDMB Hamsters seeking to bar this topic! Fact: Pagan and other pre-Christian holidays _tended to_ center on the solstices, equinoxes, and cross-quarter days. Fact: For good and sufficient reasons, so did many Christian holidays. A few appear to have been assigned to usurp the pagan events. Others fell on the date they did for historical or theological reasons. Logical inference from fact: People moving from a pagan celebration to a Christian celebration tended to keep the elements of the celebration they enjoyed – feasts, dressing up in costume, decorating something and dancing, etc. Answer to question: You can argue it either way, depending on whether you want to focus on similarities or origins. Candlemas falls on yesterday for logical reasons based on the assignment of Christmas and Jewish ceremonial law; Imbolg fell on that date as a cross-quarter day. Such little celebration of the day as is popular owes as much to Imbolg as to the original Candlemas feast. Same thing for All Saints and the pagan feast of the day before (Samhain?). Christmas and Yule have pretty much become synonymous (almost nobody celebrates \*Festa Solis Invicti \* any more). Did one **appropriate** the other? No. Did the Christian holiday take on many characteristics of the pagan one? Absolutely, in many if not most cases. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-christianity-didnt-appropriate-the-pagan-holidays/288260/5 "2005-02-04T00:14:19Z")
…and the Feast of the Resurrection, which in English-speaking cultures is called by the word “Easter”, was already a Spring schedule closely (but not quite) matching that of the _Jewish_ holiday of Pesach because it was picked up from there, or at least the Christian Scripture itself claims so – and the European pagans who DID celebrate “Eastre” or whatever it was, brought into the Christian holiday such things as bunnies and eggs and the word, as a holiday of rebirth was quite appropriate to match the holidays of the start of Spring. ---
**Author:** ![Gaius.Cornelius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b487fb/32.png) [@Gaius.Cornelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaius.Cornelius)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-christianity-didnt-appropriate-the-pagan-holidays/288260/6 "2005-02-04T17:28:50Z")
December the 25th was the day on which the birth of [Mithras](http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/holidaysfestivals/a/solsticeceleb_4.htm) was celebrated. Considering that the myths and associated rites of Mithras have so much in common with Christianty - to the point where many authorities say the two religions merged in early Christian history - this common date is unlikely to be just a coincidence. ---
**Author:** ![Gaius.Cornelius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b487fb/32.png) [@Gaius.Cornelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaius.Cornelius)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2005, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-christianity-didnt-appropriate-the-pagan-holidays/288260/7 "2005-02-04T17:32:16Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > …and the Feast of the Resurrection, which in English-speaking cultures is called by the word “Easter”, was already a Spring schedule closely (but not quite) matching that of the _Jewish_ holiday of Pesach because it was picked up from there, or at least the Christian Scripture itself claims so – and the European pagans who DID celebrate “Eastre” or whatever it was, brought into the Christian holiday such things as bunnies and eggs and the word, as a holiday of rebirth was quite appropriate to match the holidays of the start of Spring. I always assumed that bunnies just happen to be particularly reproductive at the time of easter (it being spring in the Northern hemishpere) and that eggs were hatching into chicks because eggs were not eaten during lent. Both are, of course, symbols of renewal. Is that right?